Worker Rights

IT employees' union NITES alleged that Tata Consultancy Services pressured approximately 2,500 employees at its Pune campuses to resign as part of an ongoing restructuring drive, disclosed September 8, 2026. NITES said affected staff were largely mid-to-senior professionals with 10-20 years of tenure, many over 40 with families, EMIs and other financial obligations, and claimed TCS violated the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 by terminating employment without government notice or statutory retrenchment compensation, instead coercing 'voluntary resignations.' The union urged Maharashtra's Chief Minister to intervene and a separate employee forum, FITE, called for a Special Investigation Team. TCS called the characterization 'inaccurate and purposefully mischievous,' saying only a limited number of employees were affected by a skill-realignment initiative and that those affected received due care and severance.

Former Amazon warehouse employees filed a nationwide class action, backed by the advocacy group A Better Balance, alleging Amazon systematically refused pregnant workers accommodations required under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act - including bathroom breaks, seating, and light duty - and in some cases forced workers onto unpaid leave or fired them for absences caused by the denied accommodations. Amazon said it approves most pregnancy accommodation requests.

Wipro expanded a digital activity-monitoring tool called TimeScope to company-issued laptops and desktops across India in September 2026, after an initial deployment to roughly 5,000 employees in May 2026. The tool tracks login duration, active time on work applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Chrome, etc.), and idle periods, covering fixed-price, billable, support, and undeployed roles. Under an internal policy, a day with no device login, no approved leave, no office swipe record, and no logged client-site visit can trigger an automatic leave deduction, which employees must contest to reverse. Wipro said the tool does not track personal activity, keystrokes, or screen content, and attributed the rollout to client requests for productivity visibility and concerns about employees logging in remotely while on vacation. The move follows a similar monitoring rollout at rival TCS weeks earlier and reflects an industry-wide shift toward outcome-based billing.

Hyundai Motor declined a March 10, 2026 request from ten subcontractor unions representing roughly 1,675 logistics, security, cleaning, cafeteria, and vehicle-sales workers at its Ulsan, Asan, and Jeonju plants to bargain directly under South Korea's amended 'Yellow Envelope' Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, which expanded the legal definition of 'employer' to cover companies that substantially control subcontracted workers' conditions. The Ulsan Regional Labor Relations Commission ruled against Hyundai in September 2026, and the National Labor Relations Commission upheld that Hyundai must recognize bargaining obligations for production, cafeteria, security, and cleaning subcontract workers (though not dealership sales agents). As of mid-August 2026, only 102 of 456 principal companies nationwide that received similar demands had entered negotiations, with many, including Hyundai group affiliates, contesting the rulings through administrative appeals.

In September 2026 Ubisoft closed its Winnipeg (Canada) and Belgrade (Serbia) studios and narrowed its Barcelona studio to work solely on the Rainbow Six franchise, the latest in a string of cuts that included closing Ubisoft Stockholm and Ubisoft Halifax and canceling six games (including a Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake) in January 2026, 200 Paris job cuts the same month, and 40 cuts to the Splinter Cell remake team in Toronto in February 2026, reducing total headcount from over 20,000 in 2023 to 16,590. The cuts followed CEO Yves Guillemot's January 21, 2026 announcement ending remote work and mandating a five-day in-office return without prior consultation with works councils, funded by a EUR200 million cost-cutting plan employees learned of via press release. Five Ubisoft unions called an international strike for February 10-12, 2026, with one union statement saying management was 'push[ing] us out by making our working conditions unbearable' rather than taking financial responsibility for layoffs.

A worker was critically injured after being trapped by a forklift at a Coupang logistics warehouse around August 23, 2026. South Korea's labor ministry and police raided the logistics center on September 2, 2026 over the entrapment injury, with criminal charges pursued against warehouse management. The incident followed a pattern of worker-safety complaints raised by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' courier union through August 2026, including multiple heat-related worker collapses at Coupang facilities during the summer.

In August 2026, Indian media reported that Tata Consultancy Services had installed a 'Digital User Experience Monitoring' tool on company-issued laptops covering roughly 600,000 employees, without prior formal communication to staff about the deployment. TCS did not publicly disclose the software vendor, what data was stored or reviewed, or which teams could access monitoring dashboards. Following the reports, TCS issued a statement calling characterizations of the tool as employee surveillance 'baseless and inaccurate,' saying it monitors only macro-level network performance rather than individual employee activity.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, joined by the National Employment Law Project, The Action Lab, and ALIGN, filed a complaint with the New York State Department of Labor on August 18, 2026, alleging Amazon and 13 delivery service partner (DSP) subcontractors violated New York's WARN Act by failing to give the legally required 90-day advance notice before closing DSPs and laying off delivery drivers between September 2023 and October 2025. The accompanying report found 35 DSPs closed since 2018, cutting over 3,500 jobs, with more than 1,300 workers affected by the specific violations alleged; of 20 DSPs that filed WARN notices in the study period, 13 gave less than the required notice. Potential back wages owed are estimated at up to $11 million.

OpenText laid off approximately 400 employees, about 2% of its 20,000+ person global workforce, in the week of August 17, 2026, as part of its ongoing multi-year 'Business Optimization Plan.' The company said the cuts were part of continued cost containment after selling non-core businesses to pay down debt, and characterized the Canadian impact as minimal, citing 6% year-over-year Canadian headcount growth. This follows earlier rounds of the same plan: roughly 1,200 jobs cut in 2024, about 1,600 in May 2025, and roughly 880 in March 2026, bringing cumulative cuts under the plan to over 4,000 employees.

Through 2026 iFood progressively rolled out '+Entregas', a scheduled-shift pay model paying roughly R$3.10-3.50 per delivery versus the R$7.50 minimum of the standard model - a cut couriers put at more than 50% per delivery. iFood says adherence is optional and that participating couriers earn more per hour logged; couriers report pressure to join, fewer orders for those who refuse, and mandatory quotas enforced by threat of blocking. Protests and stoppages hit Rio de Janeiro in April 2026 and Florianopolis and Uberaba around August 1, 2026, continuing grievances from the 2025 national app-workers' strike. Worker groups demand a R$10 minimum per delivery and withdrawal of the model.

In July 2026, Salesforce laid off roughly 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, data analytics, and the Agentforce AI unit, and confirmed it is sunsetting the Heroku platform team. The cuts coincided with the departure of several senior leaders tied to Salesforce's AI strategy: Adam Evans, EVP & GM of Agentforce, left to build startups (succeeded by Madhav Thattai); Ryan Aytay, President & CEO of Tableau after 19 years at the company, departed with no successor named; and CMO Ariel Kelman left to become President and CMO of AMD. The churn followed a KeyBanc analyst note (based on extensive partner/customer contact) stating 'Agentforce, as a product, just isn't there,' that customer data readiness for AI work was inadequate, and that more surveyed CIOs planned to deprioritize Salesforce spending than increase it over the following year. The layoffs and departures came less than a year after Salesforce cut ~4,000 customer-support roles (Sept 2025) citing AI agents handling half of customer interactions, a claim now in tension with reports that Salesforce itself scaled back reliance on large language models for critical functions after executives acknowledged declining confidence in the technology.

On July 15, 2026, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and CWA Canada filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB against Microsoft and subsidiaries including Xbox, ZeniMax Media, id Software, and Bethesda Game Studios. The unions allege Microsoft failed to provide bargaining information, engaged in bad-faith bargaining, took coercive actions against workers, and unilaterally announced the July 6, 2026 layoffs (which eliminated 440+ union-represented positions) without the 'decisional bargaining' required mid-negotiation on a collective agreement. Microsoft said it reached out to begin effects bargaining on July 6 and remains committed to the process. CWA-represented workers held rallies in nine US and Canadian cities on August 18, 2026 protesting the layoffs and Microsoft's labor conduct.

In July 2026, Samsung's Device Experience division informed employees it would use a 'full-time equivalent' (FTE) metric to quantify how many 40-hour-per-week jobs could be performed by generative AI tools, described internally as a way to 'standardize quantitative management of AI transformation performance.' Samsung is the first of Korea's four major conglomerates to adopt external generative AI services group-wide, and employees said the framing suggested the exercise was aimed at determining headcount reductions rather than efficiency gains. The measure followed other 2026 cost-cutting steps, including a 30% DX division cost-reduction target and economy-class travel requirements for executives on flights under 10 hours.

26 current and former Meta employees filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of California (Oakland) on July 14, 2026, alleging Meta used a 'constellation' of AI systems -- including Metamate, keystroke/activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance rankings -- to select employees for the May 2026 layoffs (~8,000 jobs). The suit alleges these output-based metrics 'by design, cannot be accumulated by an employee who is on protected medical or family leave, or whose output is reduced by a disability,' disproportionately targeting workers on protected leave and with disabilities in violation of the ADA, FMLA, and Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Meta said 'workforce management and organisational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.'

A South Korean court ruled on July 13, 2026 that two former Samsung Electronics NAND flash design engineers who moved to rival SK Hynix must be barred from working there for 18 months, citing non-compete agreements signed at hiring and the need to protect 'national core technology' amid fierce semiconductor competition. The court reduced Samsung's requested two-year ban to 18 months, finding a full two-year restriction would excessively infringe the workers' freedom of occupational choice given their compensation and conditions, but upheld the non-compete clauses as valid and imposed a 5 million won daily penalty for violations. The ruling reflects an unusual departure from South Korean courts' historically strict scrutiny of non-compete restrictions, driven by intensifying chip-talent poaching between Samsung and SK Hynix.

On July 10, 2026 a Sao Paulo labor court (first instance) ordered Nubank to pay R$40,000 in moral damages to a former employee, finding three abusive practices: routine exposure to explicit images in photo-verification work without adequate safeguards; a 2018 internal campaign involving simulated-nudity photos; and the June 7, 2023 dismissal of roughly 300 employees via a five-minute videoconference with microphones and chat disabled, treatment the judge called 'inhumane and cold' ('desumano e frio'). The court also reclassified the employee as a financial-sector worker with corresponding benefits. The ruling is subject to appeal; Nubank said the 2018 campaign materials were discontinued and that photo screening is now fully automated.

In July 2026, Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume proposed cutting up to 100,000 jobs globally, doubling a previously announced 50,000-job reduction target, citing a roughly 20% cost disadvantage versus competitors, tariff costs, and intensifying competition from Chinese automakers. An internal memo stated the company 'cannot confirm competitive use cases' for four German plants (Hanover, Zwickau, Emden, and Audi's Neckarsulm facility) in the 2030s. Labor representatives on VW's supervisory board blocked the proposals at a July 9, 2026 meeting, and IG Metall union head Christiane Benner vowed to 'stop them with all our might,' citing a late-2024 agreement to avoid German factory closures and compulsory redundancies through 2030. As of the announcement, the cuts remained proposals under negotiation rather than finalized decisions.

On July 6, 2026 Microsoft Chief People Officer Amy Coleman announced the elimination of roughly 4,800 roles, about 2.1% of the global workforce, with the largest share (~3,200) hitting the Xbox gaming division amid further studio restructuring. Microsoft stated the eliminated roles were 'not being replaced by AI,' while acknowledging AI is changing how work gets done. This followed a separate 9,000-person layoff in July 2025.

Apple closed its Towson Town Center store - the first unionized Apple Store in the United States - on June 20, 2026, after announcing the shutdown earlier in the year. The International Association of Machinists (IAM), which represents the Towson workers, filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge alleging the closure violates federal labor law and the collective bargaining agreement. Maryland's congressional delegation pressed Apple in a May 4, 2026 letter that went unanswered. The IAM argued Apple is signaling to other stores considering unionization that organizing will be met with retaliation. The Towson store was the only Apple location in the Baltimore County metro area accessible by public transit.

Kakao's labor talks with its union resumed in June 2026 but were clouded by a persistent leadership vacuum at the South Korean tech conglomerate, with workers at multiple Kakao subsidiaries (including Kakao Pay and Kakao Mobility) raising strike threats over stagnant wages, opaque restructuring, and management's failure to commit to negotiated terms. The dispute extended a multi-year pattern of governance turmoil at Kakao following the criminal probe into founder Brian Kim and continued operational instability across the group.